What’s holding you back from exploring the art of being seen?
“How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known,
and yet how desperately we long for it.”
~ Hannah Kent, The Good People
It has taken me seven years, but I have finally figured it out.
I have been trying to reverse engineer how some entrepreneurs and creators are so effortlessly themselves and willing to be seen fully. Step into the messy, scary, and spontaneous Unknown without a 40-point plan, a script, and well-defined beginnings and endings.
Without certainty as to where to place one’s feet. Possessing only inklings of intuition that dart in and out of the mind like an animal that is easily spooked.
Without the stranglehold of Perfectionism on the throat of their creativity.
Embodying irresistible visibility and vulnerability. A willingness to go bold with an abandon that is arresting, captivating, and impossible to ignore.
Understanding the Art of Being Seen
I have codified the Art of Being Seen. And it is both liberating and intoxicatingly fun to follow. Importantly, it holds the key to our marketing and business traction. It is also simple…comprising only three steps:
1) Go Bold & Walk Right Toward the Unknown. Dump everything that is inside of you outside onto the canvas, the page, the stage. Leap over your inner critic/censor and get down the first marks, paint strokes, or words without thinking, judging, or fretting. The energy of these bold moves is palpable to you and us! Whatever is coursing through you is transferred to us. It is here we are let inside the door of who you truly are and are delighted by your heart, energy, and way of seeing the world.
2) Lean into Your Intuition. Now that you have made your first, bold marks, ask your work where it wants to go next. That is, take a look at your first efforts that are in front of you and consider them as calls from your depths. Your intuition will guide you as to where to take the work. Lean in and listen. This will build the musculature of your imagination and ideation as you learn to connect dots and follow the path no matter how little light you have to guide you.
3) Work in Layers and Many Passes, Knowing You Can Edit. Paint over old work. Read over the chapter and revise it. Get down the draft of the speech, say it aloud, and work it until it sings from your gut. This helps us see the history and feel depth of your work. We feel the patina of you and delight in it…get inspired by it. Remember, all the things you consider to be “mistakes” that fill you with dread and despair, energize us, get us on our feet. We sit up and pay attention. We feel enlivened and challenged to step out and be seen fully, too.
The Key To Our Best Work
Have a look at this short video that features the artist Jane Davies. Pay close attention to her words at the 2:10 mark. Jane’s words hold the key to not only our making our best art, our best work as entrepreneurs and creators, but also our most resonant, most lucrative work.
“I’m really drawn to work by other artists that looks kinda edgy and a little raw. As if they weren’t sure where they were going. They didn’t know what they were doing, and they went there anyway.”
~ Jane Davies, artist
Now, it is one thing for us to learn these steps and concepts intellectually.
Theoretically. It is quite another to experience the art of being seen for ourselves and get them rooted into the seed of who we are so that it becomes second nature to us. So that we can finally do the work we came here to do.
Our Best Marketing Elixir
We entrepreneurs and creators make the same mistake, over and over: We forget that our best marketing elixir and key to magic-making is us. It lies in ditching fear and embracing the art of being seen.
You know you have big dreams that you want to cultivate, but you’re lacking the language, tools, and habits needed to plant the right seeds to unleash your greatest creative potential.
How can you dig into the rich soil of you?
How do you, for once and for all, get beyond what has always held you back?
By doing the deep work of getting to the core of who you are and reclaiming inspired creativity.
Remember: you are already creative.
Let’s live in joy and ease. Pull our ideal clients right to us.
Let’s rekindle your innate curiosity and creativity to map your ideas, visions, and best thinking through the process of transforming an ordinary notebook into the Book of You. Your logbook of possibility. Your nautical chart to the Art of Being Seen.
